


A Little Taste of Home

by Flutiebear



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2734658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flutiebear/pseuds/Flutiebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An old friend of Varric's comes to Skyhold and brings with her a little taste of home. A series of drabbles originally posted on Tumblr. Though these take place during Inquisition, there are no significant plot spoilers as of yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The day she comes to Skyhold is unseasonably warm. Sunlight slants cock-eyed across the rooftops, a dead reckoning for the coming autumn, while clouds roll on and off the mountaintop like a tide. For some reason, salt hangs on the winds. It tastes like sea spray. For a single, precious moment, Varric almost thinks he's home.

Officially, she's here to arrange treaties of safe passage for Inquisition vessels sailing the Waking Seas. Unofficially, she's here to sample Skyhold's whiskies and loot their coffers, and to wrap Varric in the biggest bear hug this side of the Iron Bull's biceps.

"This is a surprise," he muffles into her hair. She wears it loose now, tumbling across her shoulders. It gathers in his mouth, on his tongue. She still smells of the sea.

Heart aching, he hugs her even tighter.

"Rogue, remember? Surprise is what we do." Her voice is like Corff's finest tumbling into a dirty glass, though it has more cracks in it than it used to. She sniffles once, softly, then wipes her eyes on his shoulder before letting him go.

He looks her up and down. The years have been kind to her. He notices a thread of silver in her hair that glitters in the sunlight like jewelry. "You're still not wearing pants," he observes.

She grins. "And _you're_ still not wearing an undershirt."

He grins right back. "And we're both underdressed for a mountaintop. So let's get you inside." Varric starts to lead her into the main hall.

She steps almost awkwardly, hips canting, swaying, as if she's forgotten how to walk on solid ground. Varric wonders if she'd always walked that way; he can't remember. It hurts to not remember.

"It's all your fault, you know," she's saying to him. "After you wrote about me in that trash serial of yours, I had to throw out all my trousers. People just didn't recognize me in pants anymore. They weren't properly terrified in my presence. You know I couldn't have that."

"Of course not," he says indulgently, pulling out his chair for her.

"Thank you." She melts into it, sighing with pleasure, throwing one leg over the arm, just like she used to. How she finds it comfortable in a stone chair is beyond him, but then again, she's always been like water, forming to the shape she finds herself in. "I'm glad you understand," she says. "Now that I'm the Admiral Queen of the Eastern Seas, I demand my fair share of respect."

"You deserve it. Nice title, by the way."

"You like it? Certainly better than captain any day." Her eyes twinkle. "I see that chest carpet of yours is still as thick and glorious as ever."

"Some things never change," he says with a shrug.

"Any chance you'd let me roll around in it while I'm here?"

He chuckles. "If I didn't before, I won't start now."

"Phooey."

"Although honestly, you may not want to anymore, once you meet Blackwall. I'll look like a throw rug in comparison."

"Then I'll lay you down by the fire and you can warm my toes." She sighs again, but now it's like a sail losing its wind. "Oh, Varric. I missed you so much."

He touches her hand. "Me too, Rivaini. Me too."


	2. Chapter 2

She's an Admiral now, and she's got the hat to prove it. It's a jaunty thing, cocked to the side at an even jauntier angle, with a feather in the side that's as long as Bianca's Varric's stock. When she's not wearing it, Isabela tucks it under her arm like the head of a conquered dragon. It's the only luggage she carried.

"I found it in Lowtown, the last time I put into port," she explains. "I bought one for Merrill too, and she wore it my entire shore leave. It drove Aveline mad, too, that feather scratching up her face whenever she turned this way and that." She giggles wickedly. "You should have seen it."

"Wish I could have," he says honestly.

She meets his eyes. "You could come back, you know. If even just to visit. I'm sure the Inquisitor won't mind."

Varric's gaze slides away. He busies himself with some papers on his desk. "I can't. You know how it is. Always more work to be done."

"Ah, yes. Of course. Work." Her smile falters, just for a second. "For the Inquisition."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I just never pictured you for the sort to lay down your life for a cause, that's all." She finds some invisible speck of dust on the sash at her hip and busies herself in plucking it away. "Time was, you were everybody's best friend. You'd have rather died than choose a side."

Varric feels a flush creeping up his neck. "Hey, I draw my lines in the sand."

She laughs. "Since when?"

Her laughter crawls under his skin like minature corrupted spiders.

"Since an abomination blew up a Chantry and started a war in my home town," he snaps.

Isabela's smile vanishes. She looks into the fire and says nothing for a long time.

"Sorry," he mutters at last. "I'm a jackass. I didn't mean to—just, sorry."

"He would have done it anyway." Her voice is barely more than a whisper. "And if not him, then someone else. It was—"

"Don't you dare say 'inevitable', Rivaini." His hand curls into a fist, his writer's bump rubbing hard and fast against the callouses on his thumb from Bianca. "Don't you dare. We were there. We could have—we should have—" His voice dies in his throat. "So don't you dare."

"Not your fault," she says gently. "That's all I was going to say."

"Oh." He sighs, raggedly, and runs a hand over his hair. It's greasy. He can't remember the last time he washed it. Odd, that. He used to take so much pride in his appearance. Now look at him: dirty, disheveled, still stinking of darkspawn guts three days out. Maybe he ought to go find a sewer to crawl into, too.

But that line of thought takes Varric back to a place he doesn't want to go, so he forces himself to lighten his tone and says, "I'm tired of mages and Templars. I get enough of them in my day job. Let's get back to talking about hats. I like hats."

"So do I." But she doesn't smile when she says it.

Varric presses on, undeterred. "Maybe I should write a book about hats one day."

"Maybe you should. Maybe one about a little orphan kid who collects them. The Hightown Hatter."

"Sounds promising. It could be my first children's book." Varric eyes hers, cocked on her head at the jauntiest of angles, and he forces himself to smile. "In fact, speaking of hats— come with me, Rivaini. There's someone I want to introduce you to."


	3. Chapter 3

They're out in the main courtyard, preening in the afternoon sunshine, when Varric notices, a second too late, Cassandra hard at work against her practice dummies.

"Rivaini, no!" he cries. But to no avail: Glass crashes; a cloud of smoke blooms. Isabela has vanished. A second later, she reappears behind the Seeker, a dagger pressed to her pale throat.

"You _bitch,_ " she growls into Cassandra's ear. "Nobody fucks with my friends and lives."

Cassandra stiffens, but she does not cower. Her eyes meet Varric's. They narrow. "What charming company you keep, dwarf," she says frostily.

Isabela bears down. Cassandra inhales sharply, a stripe of red weeping down her neck.

"It's alright, Rivaini," says Varric. "She's a good guy now, I promise."

"Good guy, my arse," replies Isabela. She barely comes up to Cassandra's shoulders, which forces the Seeker to contort into an awkward back bend to avoid a slashed throat. It'd be a ridiculous sight, in any other situation. "She kidnapped you. She trussed you up like a Feastday ham."

"The ham would have complained less," Cassandra mutters.

Varric raises his hands as if soothing a skittish Darktown tabby. "But she's very sorry about kidnapping me. Aren't you sorry, Cassandra?"

Cassandra glares at him and, eventually, forces out a grunt.

"See? She's practically begging forgiveness." Isabela doesn't move or put down the dagger, so Varric takes another step forward. "Come on, Rivaini. You've made your point. You can let her go."

Isabela does so, roughly. Cassandra brushes off her tunic and wipes the blood off her neck, while Isabela wags the pointy end of her dagger in her direction.

"The next time you decide to kidnap one of my friends, you'd better be sure I'm dead first," she says. "Because next time? I won't let myself be seen."


	4. Chapter 4

"Voices, screaming, splashing, splashing; then silence, stillness; a city of chains collecting on the cold ocean floor. Two hundred souls, five fathoms deep, and she never said a word."

Isabela goes very still. She gives Cole her best fish-eye over her half-drunk tankard. The moment hangs, tense, straining, the knife before the slice.

"Come on, Kid," Varric mutters. "You've got to let her settle in first."

Then, inexplicably, Isabela bursts into laughter.

"You can read minds?" she cries. "Now _that's_ a party trick."

Cole looks to Varric, his expression fragile, so achingly child-like. "The Queen… isn't angry?"

Isabela shrugs. "It's not the weirdest demon shit I've ever seen. But don't go poking around too deep in there, puppy. You're not yet old enough for what you might find."

Cole's eyes widen. "So _that's_ how the goat got there."

Varric erupts in laughter. "You said you didn't know!"

She wipes a tear from her eye. "Oh, how I wish Aveline could have seen that. She'd have soiled her smalls." She claps her hands together and says, "Ooh, ooh! Do Varric next!"

"Wait," begins Varric. "I don't think—"

But Cole has already started speaking.

"Red skies at midnight; ash on his tongue, his hands, he can't see the ink stains, where did they go? Yellow hair catches the fire like straw. A dagger falls. He didn't take the pillow. He should have taken the pillow."

Nobody speaks.

Varric stands, his chair squealing against the floor. Isabela flinches at the sound.

"Excuse me," he says roughly. "I need some air."

As he walks out of the Herald's Rest, he hears Cole ask Isabela, "Why does Varric see _me_ there? I never sat on the crate." But whatever she tells him is swallowed by the din of the tavern.

He steps outside. The evening air cuts like knives, dispelling the sleepy warmth that had collected in his hands and toes. Varric is thankful for it. The frigid mountain air reminds him that the Herald's Rest will never be home. Home is a hundred miles across the sea. Home is a lifetime away. Home is… gone.

He looks down at his empty hands. The ink stains that once had covered them are gone; now they're coated in dirt, campfire ash, caked blood. They've begun look like another man's hands. Varric resolves to start writing another book in the morning.


End file.
